True Patriotism

True patriotism for one’s country is not shown in the love of a disenfleshed, ungrounded idea (in France freedom, brotherhood, equality; in the [u.] S. life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness) or in the degrading of another’s country (as those who share the bigheaded New England spirit are constantly doing to Russia, the South, or any other country that opposes their gnostic plans to redeem the creation through fallen man’s diabolic scientific knowledge).

Rather, it is love for the people and the place where one lives:  families, houses, hills, flowers, and so on.  The South’s distant Dorset cousin-poet, the Reverend William Barnes, tells us of this kind of patriotism in his poem ‘The Girt Woak Tree That’s in the Dell’:

The girt woak tree that’s in the dell!
There’s noo tree I do love so well;
Vor times an’ times when I wer young,
I there’ve a-climb’d, an’ there’ve a-zwung,
An’ pick’d the eäcorns green, a-shed
In wrestlèn storms vrom his broad head.
An’ down below’s the cloty brook
Where I did vish with line an’ hook.
An’ beät, in plaÿsome dips and zwims,
The foamy stream, wi’ white-skinn’d lim’s.
An’ there my mother nimbly shot
Her knittèn-needles, as she zot
At evenèn down below the wide
Woak’s head, wi’ father at her zide.
An’ I’ve a-plaÿed wi’ many a bwoy,
That’s now a man an’ gone awoy;
  Zoo I do like noo tree so well 
  ’S the girt woak tree that’s in the dell. 

An’ there, in leäter years, I roved
Wi’ thik poor maïd I fondly lov’d,—
The maïd too feäir to die so soon,—
When evenèn twilight, or the moon,
Cast light enough ’ithin the pleäce
To show the smiles upon her feäce,
Wi’ eyes so clear ’s the glassy pool.
An’ lips an’ cheäks so soft as wool.
There han’ in han’, wi’ bosoms warm,
Wi’ love that burn’d but thought noo harm,
Below the wide-bough’d tree we past
The happy hours that went too vast;
An’ though she’ll never be my wife.
She’s still my leäden star o’ life.
She’s gone: an’ she ’ve a-left to me
Her mem’ry in the girt woak tree;
  Zoo I do love noo tree so well 
  ’S the girt woak tree that’s in the dell. 

An’ oh! mid never ax nor hook
Be brought to spweil his steätely look;
Nor ever roun’ his ribby zides
Mid cattle rub ther heäiry hides;
Nor pigs rout up his turf, but keep
His lwonesome sheäde vor harmless sheep;
An’ let en grow, an’ let en spread,
An’ let en live when I be dead.
But oh! if men should come an’ vell
The girt woak tree that’s in the dell,
An’ build his planks ’ithin the zide
O’ zome girt ship to plough the tide,
Then, life or death! I’d goo to sea,
A saïlèn wi’ the girt woak tree:
An’ I upon his planks would stand.
An’ die a-fightèn vor the land,—
The land so dear,—the land so free,—
The land that bore the girt woak tree;
  Vor I do love noo tree so well 
  ’S the girt woak tree that’s in the dell. 

Source:  http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_of_Rural_Life_in_the_Dorset_Dialect/The_Girt_Woak_Tree_that%27s_in_the_Dell, posted 12 July 2013, accessed 18 Nov. 2014

(For help with the Dorset dialect, follow this path:  http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Poems_of_Rural_Life_in_the_Dorset_Dialect/Glossary)

One oughtn’t become beside himself with enthusiasm over the thin, airy ideas of shallow political philosophers (of TV, magazine, etc.), but let his loyalty instead lie deep-rooted in the dust and wood and stone of his fatherland.  It has helped keep the South and other farming societies somewhat sane thus far (an insight from Dr Clark Carlton’s very good interview here:  http://karamazov.ro/index.php/interviuri/340-clark-carlton-modernity-considers-sub-natural-existence-the-sumit-of-human-progress.html).  We would be foolish to throw away that wisdom now and dehumanize ourselves completely for the sake of having the latest baubles to come from Megalopolis’s assembly lines.